PokerStars gears up for Full Tilt Poker relaunch

The pieces are starting to fall into place for the relaunch of Full Tilt Poker, as PokerStars has been busy getting all of their ducks in a row for an impending November 6th relaunch date. Last week PokerStars announced they are shooting for a relaunch during the first week of November in selected regions, with player funds available for all players excluding the US –US players will have to wait for the Department of Justice to dole out their account balances.

For most of the Full Tilt players in the world their balances will be made available in their Full Tilt Poker account (and can be immediately withdrawn) while certain locales that require online poker rooms to be licensed by the government will see their Full Tilt Poker accounts linked to their PokerStars accounts. The countries that will have to transfer their Full Tilt Poker balances to PokerStars include France, Spain, Denmark, Estonia and Belgium. Additionally, players from Italy will likely be offered the same option, but details have not been finalized between Italy’s regulatory agency and PokerStars at this point.

As a side note, France’s regulatory body, ARJEL, has also made the decision to force licensed online poker rooms to keep player account balances in a trust, in order to avoid the potential for another collapse like we saw with Full Tilt poker post-Black Friday.

Players in all of these locales will have to wait until PokerStars can have Full Tilt Poker’s licenses reinstated or issued before they will be able to play on Full Tilt Poker. For now they will have to make do with PokerStars –what US players would give to have this option!

In addition to the repayment and relaunch announcements PokerStars has also started transporting Full Tilt Poker assets to the Isle of Man. According to reports PokerStars flew in over 30 tons of equipment from Dublin including servers and hosting platforms. The process of delivering the equipment required PokerStars to use a military aircraft, as Lee Jones explained on the PokerStars Blog:

“I offer this video (along with some great commentary by PokerStars Head of Corporate Communications Eric Hollreiser) of the Full Tilt Poker servers and associated bits being airlifted into the Isle of Man from Guernsey on Friday, September 21st. And yes, that’s a Lockheed C-130 Hercules bringing the CPUs in. I mean, we love the Manx 2 planes over here in the Isle of Man, but they’re not equipped to carry 15 tons of computer hardware. In fact, that Hercules payload represents about half the total weight of computer server equipment that’s coming over; the rest came by more traditional methods.”

Poker players are now coming to the realization that Full Tilt Poker will be back, and PokerStars is going to make everything right by the site’s players.